Organized political anti-Semitism is at its lowest point today in the United States, Isaiah M. Minkoff, executive director of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, coordinating body of Jewish groups active in combatting bigotry, reported here today at the National Trade Union Conference on Civil Rights held by the Jewish Labor Committee under the chairmanship of Adolph Held, national JLC chairman.
Mr. Minkoff conceded that “during the past year there has been greater activity among the organized group of hate-mongers. ” He cited a list of anti-Jewish publications from New Jersey, to California to Birmingham, Alabama, but he added, “they don’t amount to a tinker’s dam. ” He said that despite front page publicity, George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party “is not being bought by the American people.”
” We may safely conclude, ” the NCRAC leader said, “that political anti-Semitism certainly poses no threat. ” Surveying the late 1959 and early 1960 rash of swastika-daubing incidents around the world, Mr. Minkoff said that at the time questions were raised as to whether the incidents were organised. But after interviews were held and the situation analyzed, “one thing became clear very soon: there was no organized plot, no organized force behind these incidents, ” he stated.
Turning to discrimination, he said that “considerable progress has been made in all areas in our fight against discriminatory practices. All down the line the barriers in housing, in employment and even more so in educational institutions, have been broken. New legislation, changing of mores, economic factors, new disciplines in pure mathematics, in physics, and in engineering have opened up new opportunities which enlist the skills of many Jewish young people.
“To be sure, there are spots that are still contaminated with all types of discrimination. You find it among some employment agencies, and some barriers in exclusive residential areas, and especially, much more markedly in private clubs, Mr. Minkoff said. He added that latent anti-Semitism existed in America’s behavior patterns and these need watching. “The success of breaking down such latent anti-Semitism,” he declared, “would be accomplished as long as American society recognized that it was not a Jewish question but one of national responsibility in combatting. Present-day America rejects anti-Semitism. In fact, it condemns it. “
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
